02.22.08

There have been battles waged in the United States by special interest groups in recent years in their attempts to remove “Under God” from the Pledge of Allegiance and to have the Christian cross at the Mt. Soledad veterans memorial torn down. There’s also been, more or less, a constant barrage of attacks on the national motto, “In God We Trust.”

But there’s also been a group of volunteers working quietly and efficiently to promote recognition of the motto, and their success is evidenced by the several dozen municipalities that already have adopted formal and permanent acknowledgments of that motto.

“Just today I received a message from a veteran back in Indianapolis, delighted with what we’re doing, and wanting to be the key person [for this program] in his part of the country,” Jacquie Sullivan, chief of the In God We Trust-America campaign, said.

It already has resulted in a long list of California municipalities specifically adopting the national motto as their own, and proudly posting it in their city council chambers.

Allena Ward, 24, of Laurens, South Carolina, was sentenced this week to six years in prison after she admitted to having sex with five of her teenage students. “I wish healing for each person affected by my carelessness. And I offer my deepest and most sincere apologies to these young men,” Ward apologizes.

But Pat Trueman, special counsel for the Alliance Defense Fund, says Ward’s crimes were not the result of “carelessness” but the conscious choices of a sexual predator. Her victims were children, he says, not “young men.” And, he adds, things would have been different if Ward had been male and her victims had been girls.

“You’d get a … 30- or 40-year sentence [if that were the case],” he maintains. “But women who are predators are not viewed as predators by the legal system in many states.”

Last week, various Canadian university campuses hosted events connected to Israeli Apartheid Week. This annual international phenomenon, which began in 2005, serves as an opportunity for those who demonize Israel to spew hatred. As the name suggests, a major theme is that Israel is the Middle East equivalent of South Africa’s infamous apartheid regime.

This comparison betrays an acute ignorance — both of the meaning of the word “apartheid” and of the nature of the State of Israel.

Apartheid is the state-sanctioned and -generated degradation of one or more ethnic groups, based on an assumption of racial inferiority. Such a system relies for its implementation on segregation, denationalization and the denial of basic rights. How anyone could seriously equate Israel with such a system defies logic.

Israel is a liberal democracy, guaranteeing civil, religious and social equality to all its citizens — including Jews, Christians, Muslims, Druze and Baha’0is. Israel’s Arab citizens have the right to vote, and are represented by three Arab political parties in Israel’s parliament (the Knesset), representing a gamut of views from communism to Islamic fundamentalism. Several newspapers freely represent the views of Arab citizens in a far freer manner than is permitted among the media of Israel’s neighbours.

Complete freedom of religion for all is strictly protected in Israel — unlike in neighbouring countries, which recognize only one state religion, Islam, and even criminalize and persecute the practice of other faiths. Consider, for instance, Saudi Arabia, whose police recently arrested 40 Christians for the “crime” of praying in a private house. Followers of the Baha’is religion, who are persecuted in Iran, are welcomed in Israel, and maintain their central religious institutions in Haifa and Acre. Coptic Christians, who face restrictions in neighbouring Arab countries, enjoy freedom of religion in Israel.

In Israel, every citizen and resident has the freedom to petition Israel’s Supreme Court on any suspicion of a violation of basic rights by any governmental or official body. Arabic is an official language, together with Hebrew. All legislation, jurisprudence and official documentation appear in Arabic. Road signs are in Hebrew and Arabic. Films are subtitled in Arabic, Hebrew and Russian. There is an Arab member of the Israeli cabinet and an Arab judge on the bench of the Supreme Court. Senior officers of the Israeli army are both Arab and Druze, including at the rank of General. Arab soccer teams figure highly in Israel’s soccer league, and Arab soccer players are part of Israeli soccer teams.